


If You Love Him...

by ILLEGAILE



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief, Growing Apart, Growing Up, IDK What else to say it's SAHD prepare yourself, Independence, M/M, Sadness, hints of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 11:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ILLEGAILE/pseuds/ILLEGAILE
Summary: ... Let him go. Or alternately, we took too long growing up.It’s the innocent moments – a flash of blonde behind pillows thrown in his face, yelling after losing a game of Mario Kart, curling up on the couch while watching old animated movies past their prime – that Lewis Hamilton has to screw his eyes shut to stop seeing phantom images of what his life would have been had he not let go of the only person who could have ever loved him.Nico Rosberg fills his innocent moments with smiles he has memorized and a laughter he has loved since they’d met actual decades ago.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's been too long and the first thing I write is Angst. GO ME. LOL.

_we took too long growing up_

It’s the innocent moments that he misses. It’s the innocent moments that he feels the loss of another cadence of breath, another source of warmth, another burst of laughter that used to pervade his mundane days. When he feels the loss of another heartbeat beneath his fingers so vividly it’s enough for him to gasp for breath like his lungs are filling up with his grief and regret and are pushing all the air out of him.

It’s the innocent moments – a flash of blonde behind pillows thrown in his face, yelling after losing a game of Mario Kart, curling up on the couch while watching old animated movies past their prime – that Lewis Hamilton has to screw his eyes shut to stop seeing phantom images of what his life would have been had he not let go of the only person who could have ever loved him.

Nico Rosberg fills his innocent moments with smiles he has memorized and a laughter he has loved since they’d met actual decades ago.

Just the thought of the Finnish-German hurricane of a man hit him with a wave of nostalgia. To put it in a simpler light, it’s like when you wake up on a Saturday and realize you have nothing to do. No extra classes, no parties, no family outings, no work obligations. It’s Saturday mornings when you wake up fully prepared to do something productive or whatever and you freeze because you have not a single thing to do. It’s freeing. It’s _frightening_. You have no clue what to do with yourself.

When Lewis Hamilton realizes he no longer has a Nico Rosberg to call or to go out with or to love it is like those Saturday mornings.

You can call it many things but only one comes to mind when Lewis turns to his right where the bed is cold and the pillows are eerily untouched.

Empty.

He gets up. It’s a Saturday morning after a call from his lifelong best friend and love of his life.

“I’m getting married.”

He’s right, he thinks as he throws miscellaneous fruits into a blender. He’s right, as he starts his morning workout regimen. He’s right, he’s right, he’s right, he keeps thinking and thinking while his body works through the motions of a man that is stable and normal and functioning.

“We need to grow up, Lewis.” Nico’s voice taunts him as he sits in the corner of his weight room gasping for air through lungs full of grief and regret. “And I can’t do that unless I know who I am without you.”

It’s okay, that’s what he says to Nico though it feels more like he’s talking to himself. It will pass. He’ll come back. He always does. He wouldn’t leave me. Not like this.

It doesn’t feel real.

 

* * *

 

Nico marries Vivian and it doesn’t feel real.

Lewis hasn’t thought too deeply about Nico since he said he’d marry Viv and his lungs started choking him up. His mind occupies itself with statistics and drag and the constant chase for improvement and for survival in the world’s most precise sport.

The trajectory is exact and predictable. The math is exact and predictable. Every win is exact and predictable.

It’s the one thing his relationship with Nico will never be.

Because how can they be exact when the line between friends and lovers has blurred beyond all recognition like a painting that’s been dropped into the ocean, fished up by local fishermen and dumped into the trash only to be shredded by garbage disposal?

How can it be predictable when some days Nico is as distant to him as the North is from the South and others he’s nostalgic and will not stop asking him to come swim with him, come have dinner with him, _come to the wedding_.

Formula 1, with all it’s science and intense competition, is exact and predictable unlike his unnamable bond with Nico Rosberg that the media has latched onto like maggots do to corpses.

Talking about racing is safe so that’s all they talk about.

But sometimes, Lewis will catch Nico in one of those moments – the ones that guarantee those Saturday morning feelings, the innocent ones – chewing on yet another banana or talking to a reporter about karting and shared hotel rooms or juggling or even unicycling and Lewis lets himself be vague and unpredictable at the very least in his head.

 _‘You still give me feelings that are more indescribable than any I’ve ever gotten in any of the hundred races I’ve driven and I can’t name them but I still remember them all.’_ He thinks, staring at him from across the garage as if they are hemispheres – worlds, even – apart from one another. _‘And if that makes me childish then I’m sorry but I hope I **never** grow up.’_

 

* * *

 

 

Nico has a daughter. She’s adorable and she smiles at Lewis and laughs at his dogs and calls him _ewshh_. And it doesn’t feel real.

Lewis has been in a state of limbo since she came into the world.

He should hate her. He shouldn’t be able to look at her without scowling. But he does look at her. He looks at her a lot and whenever he does he smiles as wide as humanly possible because despite this child being the epitome of everything he can’t have with the only person he wanted to have it with it’s also a tiny Nico.

And Lewis loves every version of Nico there is. It’s universal fact. Like gravity or the laws of motion.

For every possible object or person that is in anyway genotypical or phenotypical to Nico Rosberg there is an equal amount of love (agape) that Lewis Hamilton has for said object or person.

He suddenly never wants to let the little girl out of sight. Wants to be her favorite person. Wants her to love him like her father didn’t and never leave him. He wants all the best things for Aleïa Rosberg now and it’s driving him a little nuts.

Not as nuts as her father makes him. Never. There’s something to be said of the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. The first of anything will always be the best and nothing else will be able to compare.

It’s probably these moments when he’s pondering these things that Nico finally figures out how to beat Lewis at races.

Lewis would like to be angry, would like to rage and scream at Nico the way he used to when he had so many feelings for Nico but could only express rage because otherwise he’d cry or kiss the blonde. Or maybe even both. But instead of unbridled love/grief/rage he only feels a little bit disappointed and a lot of pride for Nico’s racing.

Don’t get him wrong, he’s still hopelessly in love with the man and grief and sorrow continue to fill his lungs but now he’s learned to breathe through it. He’s learned to hold his breath longer and he’s learned to set his alarms later on Saturday mornings with no plans. He’s learned to live his life even with the malignant growth in his heart that was his love for Nico Rosberg.

So it only makes sense that when Lewis stands on the second step of the podium, content with himself and even proud of Nico for accomplishing what they’d both wanted since they were toddling into race circuits like Felipinho Massa that Nico decides to be… well, unpredictable.

“I won’t be racing next year.” He says like it’s a trivial matter, like it’s minute and easily the most forgettable part of his entire interview. Like he hasn’t just ended Lewis’ world in one sentence.

Nico isn’t coming back. Nico’s grown up, but he’s not coming back.

And, for the first time, it occurs to Lewis that that’s what he meant when Nico said he had to know who he was _without him_. If he’d meant goodbye forever.

Because if he did, then it’s not fair.

Lewis hadn’t thought it was goodbye forever. He’d thought it was goodbye for now.

Nevertheless, there’s nothing he can do about it.

It’s a Monday morning but it feels like Saturday with nothing to do. The internet explodes, Nico Rosberg has retired from Formula 1. And in Lewis’ head, his voice continues to whisper. Nico’s voice in that timbre he used to love.

“We need to grow up, Lewis.”

Lewis frowns because he has grown up and it comes with the side effect of finally understanding what Nico meant.

“We need to grow apart, Lewis.”

 

* * *

 

 

Lewis feels alright, he thinks as he enters the garage. The other side of it is filled with Valterri’s crew and in an effort to welcome him to the team, Lewis greets him. It’s all very civil. It’s all _fine_.

Until Nico Rosberg shows up to watch.

But Lewis has learned a thing or two about moving on for the past few years and that contentedness he felt last year? That has nothing on this year.

He’s finally let go of every last vestige of Nico.

His Saturday morning feelings are met with slight disappointment instead of all out depression.

His lungs aren’t full of grief and sorrow anymore.

He feels… oddly normal.

Which is why he isn’t surprised that Nico throws in one last surprise.

One last unpredictable waterballoon to the face for old times sake.

“I never stopped loving you, Lewis.” He says, and Lewis believes it.

And for the first time ever he believes in what he says back to Nico.

“I haven’t either…” He starts with a grin. “Until now.”

He lets the phone drop from his hands as the sound of flat lining fills the room.

It feels like Saturday morning, but it’s not frightening anymore.

It’s just _freeing_.


End file.
